


Until There's Nothing Left of Us

by Kount_Xero



Series: The Sorceress War [9]
Category: Final Fantasy VIII
Genre: Depression, Depressive, Gen, Lore-building, Pregnancy, dark themes, depressed, lore expansion, love in a time of war, para-magic, relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-30 14:14:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 12,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20098522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kount_Xero/pseuds/Kount_Xero
Summary: Two years after "The Fated Children" Selphie visits the flower field for a conversation, longing for someone to listen to her as she tells the tale of what happened to her after she found out that she was pregnant.





	1. Is Anyone Here Alive?

**Author's Note:**

> It gets dark. With a capital DARK.

**(Blind to what makes this thing beautiful.)**

* * *

**(TWO YEARS AFTER THE DOWNFALL OF SORCERESS EDEA – NOW.)**

The rough soil under her sandals made a scraping sound, now alien to her; as alien as the yellow sundress with the floral pattern on it. Not hearing the sound of combat boots on the ground, not feeling the nylon lining of the uniform were strange. Her legs felt freer, her steps somehow easier, but she also felt more exposed. But she straightened her straw hat, brushed a stray strand of chestnut hair from her once-brilliant green eyes and continued.

Centra was exceptionally bright today, even though it would probably be written off as cloudy with a chance of rain for those who did not live there. The perpetually gray skies of the island didn’t bother her. It reminded her of when she was a child, when the world was full of wonders.

When the worst thing that could happen was Zell snitching on them, and being grounded as a result.

Nostalgia clawed at her heart as Selphie walked on, her steps slow but determined, towards the flower field.

* * *

It was a wonder that all kinds of flowers were able to thrive under the harsh conditions and infertile ground of Centra. She would go so far as to call it a miracle. She had suspected, ever since she was a child, that Matron being a sorceress had something to do with it, and Selphie had loved her all the more for it. Now, standing right at the edge of the wonderful landscape painted in every color she knew, she knew better. Magic didn’t work that way. Magic didn’t create, it destroyed. Para-magic was just a weaker form of destruction, and black magic, well... it was destruction itself.

Still, she couldn’t help but wish that it worked that way after all. She had earned the right.

* * *

Five steps in, Selphie bent over to remove her sandals. She didn’t want to just kick them off and then lose them in the flowers. With the fresh ground under her bare feet, and leaves gently caressing her legs, she continued to walk. She didn’t need a map to find what she was looking for; she had put it there herself.

She had dug the grave two years ago, almost to the day.

* * *

The headstone was carved from one of the suitable rocks taken from the breakwaters. Extracted, shaped and had the words etched in by Ward Zabac’s strong hands. He had let Selphie in on a secret as he had done it. The others hadn’t been able to stomach being in the same room as the stones, but Selphie, always curious, had gone in to take a look. Ward had told her, in his own quiet language of gestures that he already had three of them stashed in Esthar. One for him, one for Kiros and one for Laguna.

He had gotten to lie beneath his about a year after that. Selphie remembered, as she set her sandals down, that Sir Laguna was now the only living member of their trinity.

Trinity. Such an ugly word.

_Three parts of a whole._ _What a joke._

* * *

Selphie tucked her legs in as she sat down. One hand reached out to caress the letters. The stone was smooth, smoother than she thought was possible.

**EDEA KRAMER  
****LOVING WIFE  
****MOTHER TO THE ORPHANS  
****BELOVED SORCERESS**

“Hello, Matron.” Selphie said. She sighed. She could feel tears welling up, and knew that it was okay now. Here, she could.

She could just let it go, and nobody would know the things she would tell her dead mother.

“I have nowhere else to go.” She said, “Such a shit thing to say, I know. Then again, I am pretty shit myself, so... it evens out. I know what you’re thinking: I could talk to any of them. Seifer, Quistis... hell, even Brea. Squall, maybe. But I can’t. Everybody’s got a cross to bear. My shit isn’t as important as theirs. Between trying to make this world a better place and trying to hold everything together, there’s just no room to breathe anymore. Hyne... it sounds so pathetic.”

There it was. One more word, maybe two, and she could cry like she had been trying to do for a while now.

“And maybe it is, but it’s worse than when we killed you.”

There it was. A teardrop.

“You were my mother. I never told you that. Whenever I tried to picture my mother’s face, it’d always be you. I used to do that sometimes, you know – I made up a family. I’d stitch them together from stories and newspapers, the ones the White SeeD dropped off at our door every day. And every time, in every family, you would be my mother. Mister Cid would be my father, but he’d be off working, and you’d complain, but we loved him anyway. And what did I do, in the end? I killed you.”

Selphie wiped her tears with the back of her hand. There’d be more, she knew, because it was time to get to it.

“And now I’ll never know all the things that you felt, all the things you thought about when you looked at us just standing there, our weapons in hand, coming to kill you. Holy Hyne, Matron, I... I...”

_Say it. It’s time to make it real._


	2. No-One Dreams Anyway

**(No-one thinks anyway.)**

* * *

**(FOUR MONTHS AGO.)**

Squall woke up to the sound of the toilet flushing. He turned and saw Selphie walking out of the bathroom, her yellow, oversized t-shirt hanging loose down one shoulder. Her hair was a frizzed mess, strands branching out every which way, and her eyes were puffy and swollen. She was wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

He couldn’t help but smile. This was the moment he woke up to every single morning – usually without the vomiting that she had been prone to these last few days. The sight of her made him feel glad to be alive, to have made it. Unkempt, barely awake, stumbling, slurring her words, anything but graceful but utterly beautiful in ways he couldn’t express.

“Ugh...” Selphie scratched her head, “What is this? Is this the dinner in Fisherman’s Horizon?”

“That was over a month ago.”

Just the mention of that recalled an incredible evening for him. Dinner in a small, rickety restaurant in Fisherman’s Horizon. Just the two of them, out of uniform, celebrating their years together. Good wine flowing like water, toasting to fallen friends and years of joy and despair. A prayer to Zell, softly murmured in the sanctity of their closed circle.

Squall remembered stumbling back to the hotel and then Selphie laughing that crystalline laughter when they had found themselves feverish, half-undressed, but way too drunk to have sex. They had stripped down completely instead, and had spent the remainder of the night in bed, talking. It had ended with Selphie crying herself to sleep, wondering aloud if it was enough, if it could be enough... and if so, why hadn’t it been enough sooner?

Squall had stayed awake long after she had started to snore lightly, staring at the wall, the pattern on which obscured by the quarter-moon light coming in through the window... wondering how easy it would be... how easily it could have been him on that stage, years ago and far away, putting a gun to his head and pulling the trigger.

Too easy... if it hadn’t been for her. 

* * *

“Yeah, but what if I caught a worm or something?” Selphie asked, “One of those fuck-me monsters that grow inside you?”

“I don’t think it’s a worm.”

“Ah, whatever. I’ll have Christin write up an Esuna. Good thing I’m the Garden Master.”

“I’ve been meaning to tell you and Quistis... I think, technically, you’re the Garden Mistress.”

Selphie flashed a wicked smile. “Wanna?”

“Don’t you have a class?”

“So do you. Don’t think I’ll forget it, though.”

“I don’t forget easily.”

“See how your memory is when you get back, yeah?” Selphie said as she turned around and went to the kitchen.

Squall remembered that, after they had sobered up, they had made up for lost time. They had been two days late and completely exhausted because of it, as well. He remembered Brea’s knowing half-smile in the hangar bay, a secret nobody else knew.

* * *

Selphie hated going to the Infirmary. For her, the sterile, blank walls, the sharp white lights, the complete absence of anything but the absolutely necessary and those were a sickening mixture of Estharian futurism and Ocean Garden militarism (all smooth surfaces and functional lunks of metal and plastic.) It unnerved her.

Christin’s office was worse. Two guest chairs, one desk – her desk, one console mounted to the right side of the desk, her name plaque (**CHRISTIN OLGE, C.M.D. **etched dark blue into SeeD gold**) **and her pad, right next to an ornate pen. Galbadian. Squall’s gift to her.

There was a clock on the wall behind Selphie. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

The door opened after an eternity.

* * *

Dr. Christin, clad in her sword and shield the lab coat, sat calmly, taking notes on her prescription pad as Selphie described what had been happening. After a brief discussion of the possibilities, Selphie was handed a page full of illegible scribbling. Judging by the amount of separate lines, Selphie counted a lot of tests.

The one at the bottom of the list caught her eye.

“What is this?” Selphie asked.

“What do you mean?”

Selphie hated how Christin never called any of them ‘sir.’

“Gynecology? Really?” Selphie asked.

“You didn’t show up for your regular last time.” Christin said.

“It’s a waste of time.” Selphie said, slipping the list into her jacket’s side pocket, “Mages are sterile. Everyone knows that.”

“That’s a common misconception, actually.” Christin said, “Mages _can be_ sterile, more often than knot are - but not all of them. Admittedly, the margin for the exceptions is small enough to be statistically insignificant, but still... besides which, you’re the Garden Master. We have to be sure that you’re healthy in, shall we say, every way possible.”

Selphie managed a smile.

* * *

Selphie spent the next two days half-naked in one room of the Infirmary or the other, wearing only the paper-thin robe that exposed her to the world. Cold and sterilized tools of medical-grade Estharian stainless steel pushed and probed and touched her in all sorts of places. Small plastic cups were given for her to fill, buckets of blood was taken. Saliva, blood, urine... and there were the other ones, where they expected her to lie still while they spread her legs and looked around to see if everything was alright in there.

The nausea wasn’t any better by the end of it. By the time they had gotten around to the final item, the ultrasound, Selphie had to clench her teeth hard to keep herself from throwing up on whatever specialist Squall had on retainer.

Once they were done, the said specialist, handed Selphie her uniform and told her to go to Christin’s office after getting dressed. 

* * *

The Garden Master’s uniform was a variant of the standard SeeD uniform. It had been Quistis’ idea to make them unisex: jacket, pants, combat boots. In the case of the Garden Masters, the uniform’s color scheme was switched around: its base was white, the accents were SeeD blue and the buttons were gold. Being back in it as she sat across her desk from Christin made Selphie feel somewhat human again... if not for the bile she kept tasting.

“I suspected as much.” Christin said as she leaned back, “You’re pregnant.”

Selphie’s mind stopped. Shock drowned everything out and for a few moments, she had no thoughts in her head. She just glared blankly at the doctor.

“C-come agai-again..?” Selphie stuttered.

“You’re pregnant.” Christin repeated, matter-of-factly, “About five to seven weeks along.”

“Don’t... fuck with me.” Selphie said, clenching her fists to stop her hands from shaking, “Don’t. I’ll end you.”

“I’m not _fucking with you_. The nausea you’ve been experiencing is what we call morning sickness. It’s not a very good name, as you can get sick any time during the day during a pregnancy.”

Selphie’s thoughts were imploding, one after another – a total collapse brought on by a rapid-fire slide show of everything that had happened to her so far in her life... followed by everything that _could, _in the future.

“This will be a highly personal question, Garden Master,” Christin said, “But I have to ask... you haven’t used any form of birth control, yes? And neither has the Garden Grand Master?”

Selphie clenched her teeth.

“None of your fucking business.” She said.

“Thank you.” Christin said, “That was all I needed to hear.”

Silence for a few moments, maybe a minute. Christin patiently waited, as she knew that the Garden Master would eventually ask the question. For the doctor, it was strange to be in her current position. She was used to surprise pregnancies, because even if the Garden Law prohibited what it had termed “sexual promiscuity” among cadets and SeeDs, the Garden was full of individuals living constantly under high-risk conditions, even when in the safety of what was their home.

The long and short of it was: things happened.

A shore leave here, a post-op round of drinks and a hotel room there, a meeting in the secret area, and you had a doomed pregnancy. Under the Garden Grand Master’s orders, Christin had agreed to discreetly perform abortions on demand, no questions asked, no records kept. She had recruited her right hand Kane from some back-alley Deling slum to help her do so. His was not the cleanest of origins, but he knew how to get the job done with no harm to the patient... and he didn’t steal meds.

Christin was used to keeping her voice neutral, telling young cadets that they had options, or offering them help in _taking care of it_ as they often said. But sitting in her chair, looking at a legend, a renowned war hero and telling her that she was pregnant, was something else entirely.

“So...” Selphie’s eyes were glued to her fists, “What happens now?”

“It’s up to you. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Garden Grand Master’s... policy, if you will, on these matters.”

Selphie looked up at Christin, and nodded.

“I... I can’t do that to him.” She said, “I’ll... I’ll have to talk to him first.”

“Take your time. But keep in mind that should you want to opt out, you have a month, maybe five weeks before that’s no longer an option.”

“I...”

“In the meantime, there are measures you will need to take, for both possible outcomes.” Christin continued, “Estharian pharmaceuticals, mostly, along with some Galbadian homeopathic remedies. The Timber yellow rose, when boiled into tea, can help with the sickness. Other than that, it’s the obvious: no para-magic. No Guardian Forces.”

“It’s my husband who keeps one junctioned at all times...”

Christin raised an eyebrow. At all times? For how long?

“Never mind.” Selphie said, “I know all that stuff about magic. I think it’s my job to know.”

“Right.”

“So when can I... come in? Y’know, to... discuss things?”

“You’re the Garden Master. You can come in whenever you want to.”

Selphie couldn’t get out of the room fast enough.

* * *

Squall found taking care of his gunblade after a training session to be positively therapeutic. It was an old habit, a ritual. He’d be back in the Garden Masters’ level, having showered and refreshed, healed from fighting the battles he had lost years ago.

But his gunblade would be anything but those things. It’d be dirty, caked with different colors of blood, laced with pieces of entrails, carrying small dings and cracks.

Presently, his Odineum gunblade was on his lap, and he was going over a particularly tough patch of Gnat viscera. The damn thing just didn’t seem to want to budge.

The door of the suite hissed open then, followed by the shuffling, almost reluctant footsteps of Selphie. Squall looked up from his weapon to see her standing there, three steps in. The door closed behind her. The look on her face made him gently place the gunblade on the floor (no weapons allowed on the coffee table) and go to her.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

Selphie looked up. In her eyes, Squall saw the weariness he had been staring at replaced by the joy he had gotten accustomed to seeing fewer and fewer times.

But there was also just the barest hint of fear, barely held back.

“There’s something.” Selphie said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mages being sterile is part of the sorceress lore I have developed over the course of this story: it came to me when I thought about why witches had to be women. There are no Sorcerers, mainly because, I reasoned, the female body is wired to give birth, which is why they are able to channel the energies of pure magic. Then, it occurred to me that as much as she loved children, Edea didn't have any of her own. From there, I went in the direction of: because she is a Sorceress.
> 
> I will be going into more detail about how Sorceresses came to be, but for now: the perpetuity of a Sorceress, is a side-effect of pure magic, as is not being able to bear children. A Sorceress loses the ability after becoming a vessel for pure magic (again, will be explained how.) This is why a Sorceress' powers must be passed on in order for her to die - for a Sorceress, birth is when she dies and passes on her powers. Therefore, her "children" are every Sorceress after her.
> 
> As for mages who use para-magic, they don't share the Sorceress' perpetuity, but they do have to channel magical energy, which is what usually renders them sterile as a biological side-effect. There is no other explanation to it than the fact that junctioning magic to yourself must alter you in some way, shape or form. While sparing use, such as with combat specialists, wouldn't necessarily put the user at any kind of mutational risk, mages use para-magic regularly. It's kinda like how constantly using GFs erases memories (explained in "The Few Remaining Strands" which doubles as an explanation as to how para-magic works.)
> 
> As for the "sexual promiscuity" part, that is actually part of the canon; I added the bit about abortions mainly because the rigorous conditioning of SeeD cadets and the hellish training they undergo, while not without its own ethical dilemmas, does fly in the face of actual human nature. Of course things happened, so rather than to condemn cadets to some back-alley "clinic," Squall, ever the pragmatist, would choose to have it done as safely as he could possible ensure.


	3. Living in Misery

**(Look through my eyes.)**

* * *

**(CENTRA. NOW.)**

Selphie laughed, and wondered instantly why she was laughing, especially when there was nothing to laugh about.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen him drop his gunblade before. It was amazing. It was like seeing a Chicobo hatch, rarer than rare.”

She sighed heavily.

“And what's worse is, I thought I knew what he was gonna say once he stopped being shocked. He was gonna say to _take care of it_, like how the cadets say it. He was gonna tell me all the reasons why we couldn’t have a child, tell me everything that I know by heart. This and that and the other, and all good and true... except...”

More tears. Selphie took out her handkerchief.

“He just asked if I’d agree for Raine for a girl, because he knew I was set on Laguna for a boy. Can you imagine..? For a moment there, Matron, I was as shocked as he was.”

Her fingers curled into a fist. She could see the scar there. Straight as a razor, stitched just as good as it was cut.

“I fucking _hated_ myself for it. I wasn’t giving him enough- no, fuck that, I wasn’t giving him _any_ credit. Treating him like the enemy, and there was and... he loves me.” She sobbed, “Fuck... he loves me, Matron...”

Selphie cried for a while. She was sure it was forever. Her watch said it was only for a minute.

“And that’s the worst thing, you know?” she continued, “That he loves me. I don’t know of anything in the world that can damage me the way it does. I’ve faced monsters and demons and sorceresses... I’ve faced _you, _and I’ve never come up against something as destructive, as devastating as him. It’s ‘cause he disarms me. Sees right through me. He looks at me,” Selphie snarled through clenched teeth, “, and he likes what he sees. That sick fuck... that sick fucking _fuck!_”

Her fist began pounding on the dry soil as she screamed her insults, over and over and over again, until her skinned knuckles and cramped arm just led her to scream at the headstone, scream until her throat was sore and collapse onto the grave, warm and welcoming, sobbing and crying.

“Why?” she asked, to nobody in particular, “Why does he have to..? Why can’t he just hate me like I do? Like a normal person would? But no, h-he has to be this way. Because it’s the only way he knows how to be.”

She sat back up and brushed off the dirt some. She knew it wouldn’t come off.

“I hate him for it sometimes. I can’t stand it. ‘cause I don’t get it. But it showed. And for a while after that, after I gave him the news, I saw something else, too. He was scared. It wasn’t just the obvious stuff, like the guard detail he put on me, the way he stripped me of all the spells I had junctioned... he even made me wear his Odineum necklace to block anything I might try to pull off. Hyne, that thing is heavy. No wonder he looked like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders when we first met – his fashion choices drove him to it.”

A chuckle. Not a full laughter, but still better than what had come before.

“And to see him afraid, well... I started looking for other things. And there they were. Quistis called it a confirmation bias, but I know better. I know my husband better. For the first time in his life, he had something to look forward to. He had a future. You know the old SeeD philosophy, the one you and Ellone hated so much – to consider themselves dressing for their own funeral when they put on the uniform. Why else would the graduation parties be so free-for-all? Last night on Earth, last night alive. I should know, I put together most of them.”

_Come on. Say it._

“And for a while there, I thought that I could, too. I had a child. If I had a child, maybe the future wasn’t dead in a trench somewhere. The future wasn’t gunned down on the streets of Deling or monster chow in the Island Closest to Heaven... or a drooling vegetable because of the GF Syndrome. Maybe the future was bright and maybe we could even retire. Maybe we could get a little house on Winhill with those wooden fences, and tell our daughter –‘cause it was a girl, Matron, and a mother knows these things- about her grandparents. You, Cid, Laguna, Raine... much as we knew. Maybe she’d be a SeeD. Hyne, I could just picture arguing with him over dinner about which discipline she’d pick up – the gunblade or para-magic? Teach her tactics, quiz her on the _Biblis Tactica..._ one big happy family. Her teen angst years would have a body count.”

One hand hesitantly rose up from the ground and trailed across her stomach. She knew that she couldn’t actually feel inside her body, but as her palm pressed against the soft fabric of her dressed, she felt the cavity inside her. The hollowed out center, the void of life.

_Say it._

“We never got there, Matron. We never got anywhere.”


	4. From Now On

**(I always used to pretend.)**

* * *

**(FIVE WEEKS AFTER THE SHOCK. ON THE DAY NOBODY GOT ANYWHERE. OCEAN GARDEN. BREA.)**

Ami rose her head from the pillow and scanned the room with groggy eyes. It wasn’t any different than the SeeD suites she knew they would be staying in once she had cleared the op in two weeks’ time... but somehow, it felt different.

Maybe because it was the General’s bedroom.

It certainly looked the part. Everywhere Ami turned, she saw guns.

The Exeter she had used against Sorceress Edea was mounted to the wall, facing the bed. From having fished around for her clothes, she also knew that there was a machine gun under the bed. There were several pistols atop the wardrobe. The dresser, normally used extensively by those who wanted to leave behind beautiful, if mangled, corpses was the shrine of a single snub-nosed revolver.

Ami had taken a look at the cylinder one morning. Brea wasn’t there, and she didn’t think she’d mind, anyway.

Ami had found that the revolver didn’t have a safety catch (neither did any of Brea’s other guns,) and had only one bullet, ready to fire.

The image of waking up to Brea sitting in front of the make-up mirror, hands placed on either sides of the gun, had flashed before her eyes. Their first morning in this suite.

Ami had asked her how often she did that.

The answer was simple: _every morning._

Ami shrugged it off. She seemed to be alone this morning, and she had other things to fuss about.

Sleeping with the General wasn’t exactly a privilege. Ami had heard the rumors, but those hadn’t been very reliable. Even supposed first-hand sources were eager to brag, and it was impossible to tell if they were lying. But by any generous estimate, after some serious affair years and years back, the General had stopped getting involved with people. She picked them out, or ran into them by chance while they were off-duty, or something else. However it went.

Thing was, there wasn’t any one among the gossip rags that would say anything less than admiring. They felt honored to be picked. Twice-decorated veteran, Trabian survivor, aide and then the successor to the legendary Squall Leonhart – who wouldn’t?

Ami wasn’t sure if their veneration was on point.

They only fucked. Ami knew that, for the others as well as for herself. Just as much as no-holds-barred sex any of them could handle in one night, and that was it. Sleeping with Brea Willings a second time was considered to be an honor among some. Nobody had heard of a third time.

Ami was back in the General’s suite for a fifth time in six months now. She was sure that _that _was a privilege.

* * *

Ami laid back down. Her entire body was sore. Even the soft sheets against her skin felt rough. There hadn’t been any sort of tenderness last night, as there hadn’t been on any of the other nights. Just the General asking her if she wanted the come in. The rest was a blur of Brea pulling her in, closing the door, locking it, and then taking from her all she had.

Ami stretched. It helped some, maybe enough to sit up. With some difficulty, she sat up and crossed her legs.

The revolver was staring at her.

She forced her legs to move and managed to get off the bed. The tiled floor felt cold under her bale soles, and Ami shivered. She unceremoniously grabbed the bed sheets and wrapped them around herself – just in case somebody came in, somebody that wasn’t Brea.

On her way to the living area, she glanced at Brea’s bedside clock, housed beside a 9 milimeter Caraway. 6:04, internal.

The barrel of the compact Brea kept in her pillow kept its Cyclops eye on Ami as she shuffled out of the bedroom.

* * *

Brea treasured her twin pistols a great deal more than any of her other weapons. The Exeter was rather special as well, loaded with Pulse Ammo (and thank Hyne for its almost eternal half life,) but the twin, silver pistols were her constant companions. They had served her well over the years and through the wars, and then through smaller skirmishes. When she cleaned them, she turned it into a ritual. A pure white, cotton cloth was draped over the coffee table. The pistols were neatly disassembled, left and right, its pieces arranged meticulously. As Brea brushed the barrel of her right hand, Ami stumbled into the room. A cursory glance told Brea that she would have to stretch some to maintain the appearance of a normal, if tired, strut. As it stood, it showed that her muscles, thighs especially, had seized up.

“Morning.” Ami said, yawning. She ran a hand through her boy-short, jet-black hair, “You’re up early.”

“Force of habit.” Brea said.

“I know the drill by now.” Ami said with a smile. She made her way to the kitchen and emerged with two oranges and a glass of milk. Knowing that Brea was not to be approached when she was cleaning her pistols, which she seemed to do after a night with her, she placed the oranges on the counter and started peeling one of them.

“I can hear you thinking.” Brea said.

“I don’t think I have thoughts right now.”

Brea smiled, “No, it isn’t.”

“Isn’t what?”

“It isn't why I upped your rank recently.”

Ami almost dropped the orange.

“You... what?”

Brea gently placed a detached barrel slide down, "I didn't invite you in to use and then get rid of you."

Ami bit her lip.

"...it's okay." she said, "I don't mind."

“No. It's not." Brea said, "And maybe you should."

Silence. The question hung in the air, and they both knew it. Ami tried to say something, anything. She had never seen Brea break character like this - despite her pretending to be comfortable around her General, Ami had always felt a certain distance, a distance that Brea had kept and she herself had respected. But now, it seemed... different. There was tension in the air that she could cut with the knife she had just used to help peel the goddamn orange.

"...so, what now?" Ami asked.

Brea didn't answer. She seemed to be considering it. When she looked up at her, Ami caught a mischievious look in her General's eyes. It made her shiver with delight.

“For starters, I will not have one of my best and brightest do the walk of shame.” Brea said with a half-smile, “Where’s your uniform, Wint?”

“All over your suite, sir!” Ami responded with a chuckle.

“Then get dressed, soldier. I’ll be watching to see that you get it right.”

Brea leaned back and crossed her arms. Under her mischievous gaze, Ami dropped the bed sheets and gave her a salute, saying:

“Yes, sir!” 

* * *

Ami showered. It helped with the fatigue. She then shuffled around the suite without a stitch on, while Brea calmly reassembled her pistols. When Ami was dressed in her uniform once again, she found breakfast waiting for her. She sat down.

They ate in silence. Ami wasn’t expecting a big speech, or an expose of the General’s thoughts, but there was definitely a Hexadragon in the room; a whole herd of them, actually. Ami opted for one of the lesser ones.

“Is it because I’m a gunblade specialist?”

Brea’s eyes snapped up and caught hers. “No. It’s not. And before you ask – I am not in love with him.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“You wouldn’tve been the first.” Brea said, “It’s different, with him.”

“So you two didn’t... y’know... fuck?”

Brea laughed, spitting out a mouthful of tea.

“No.” she said with a grin, “We didn’t. I know some of the older SeeDs think we did, but I have never seen him look at another woman besides Garden Master Tilmitt.”

“Then what about you and me?” Ami asked, vengefully spreading jam over her toast, “What are we, then? ‘cause don’t give me that bullshit, General, I know you don’t do reruns.”

Brea nodded.

“You’re with me.” She said.

“That’s not saying much.”

“Then you weren’t listening just now.”

Ami thought about it. Rumors aside, the Fated Children and Brea Willings – it sounded like the title of the hottest act in town. But it wasn’t any less true because of that. But she knew that that wasn’t what the General meant.

The rumors were there, because it seemed like Brea was hopelessly, silently in love with the Garden Grand Master. Always by his side, through the thick and the thin, instrumental in many of the victories that had propelled him to the heights of infamy. And now, she was his successor. That last one was an honor most committed SeeDs would’ve killed for, and yet it had been handed to Brea, no questions asked. Presently, Ami was looking at it not as a cadet reading up on their history, but as a SeeD, and, as fate would have it, as the General’s lover.

“Love is easy.” Brea said, “It comes naturally to most people. You love, you lose, you love again to lose again. It goes on. It’s also complicated for people like me. But you aren't here because of that fact alone. You're here because of you. Nothing more and nothing less.”

“You have a knack for dodging questions. Anyone tell you that?”

Brea smiled.

“Do I?”

"Yes."

"It's because I trust you." Brea said.

Ami was speechless. That, she knew, was the greatest honor.

“You’ve earned my trust, Ami; but you will have to keep earning it every day. That’s why I-“

The phone went off, startling both. Brea got up and picked it up. Ami watched her, curious.

“Yes, sir.” Brea said, “Yes, sir. Ami Wint. I understand, sir.”

Brea put the receiver down.

“Who was it?” Ami asked, although she knew the answer.

“The Garden Grand Master. There’s an emergency. Nothing major, but anyone below my rank is prohibited from venturing out of the dorms.”

“And you?”

“He’ll call me if he needs me. Always does.”

Brea sat back down and they finished breakfast, talking about the idea of love. Ah, the idea of love.

Elsewhere in the Garden, hope was dying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ami Wint was supposed to be a side-character and the star of a side story that would chronicle her rise from a prospect recruit to SeeD and would end with her being Brea's Brea. However, as the story progressed, I found it increasingly difficult to put her front and center, especially since I thought doing so distracted me from the main storyline and the protagonists a bit too much. Plus, I didn't have enough time to develop her like I did with Brea, which meant that trying to force it was a bit... I dunno, pointless.
> 
> But I kept this chapter, mainly because I wanted to touch upon Brea's personal life - that's a side of her we never got to see anywhere before. Sure, there was the sharpshooter she had been in love with, but other than that, she always stood such a frigid figure. I thought having this little slice of her life here would also help me to figure out a way to factor in life outside of the crises, the wars and situations that dominated the storylines. Plus, it went well with the overall feel of this installment.


	5. Boys & Girls

**(Who'd rather die young than grow old.)**

* * *

**(CENTRA. GRAVE OF THE MOTHER. NOW.)**

“And I’ve asked myself that. Don’t tell anyone. It’ll be our little secret. I take enough flak from cadets who ask me if being a two percenter gets everyone depressed or suicidal. Or if it makes them cut themselves. I’ll tell you this – I’d be glad if we could all sit down with our knives and start cutting. I know you’ll frown on this, but don’t knock it till you’ve tried it, Matron, it’s seriously good sometimes.”

Selphie glanced down her arm, and then to her legs, down to her feet. The cuts were just faded, whiter-than-white lines, but they were there, and she remembered each one – more keenly than she remembered her other scars.

“Zell didn’t think any of it was enough to live. I’m starting to think that, after all these years, maybe he was right. Not for the same reasons, but when it’s all said and done, Matron, is it enough?”

A familiar ache crept into her heart.

“You know, I can’t remember what his voice sounded like.” Selphie said, looking up to the gray skies, “Sometimes I think I almost have it. Other times, it’s just gone. He’s speaking, but I can’t remember his voice. Hell, I can’t remember that bouncy, insecure girl fresh from Trabia, either. Remember the days? Well, you weren’t really _there_, but I was. I suggested we blow up Vinzer Deling with a rocket launcher and meant it. That was before a cadet of mine lost an arm to a plastic explosive taped to the side of a train car, before I had shrapnel extracted from me for two weeks straight. Before I knew enough to know better. Because now I know what it feels like to be blown up by some punk with a rocket launcher. Blew out my eardrum, that fucker...”

Selphie suddenly became aware of something entirely insignificant.

“Sorry for cussing so much. I’m so used to it, I didn’t use to so much. I think Seifer’s filthy mouth finally rubbed off on me. He’d like that. He fuckin’ well better!”

She laughed. A sound she was sure was ugly to most ears, with its timbre robbed of joy.

“There’s so few of us left now, Matron. We’re all under the same roof again, fighting and bleeding and everything else. You can take the kid out of the orphanage, but you can’t take the orphanage out of the kid.”

She smiled, an expression that faded after merely a second.

“You know, I hate the cadets. I can feel them staring. The Fated Children. Trabians used to hate my guts, now they can’t get enough of me. Some just wanna hear about killing you. But lately, they’re all different. They pity me. Squall’s emergency curfew kept this... out of their view, but now they all think I tried to kill myself. A popular theory is that I finally caught Squall banging Brea in her office, discovered an affair of ages. Psh, as if.”

More tears. She was surprised to see that there were some left, after all.

“I wish that was what happened, Matron. I wish I had walked in and there he was, tired of my shit and enjoying himself with someone else. With her, even. But that’s not it. It’s just too much – dealing with concerned face after concerned face, all telling me how it’s all worth it, how life is where everything is – says them. Zell had it right the first time – he didn’t have to go through all this shit to find out that it’s not enough to live. So I forgot, I got by, I did the happy, bubbly, bouncy girl routine, and died a little more inside every time I did, because it got harder and harder... and then one day, I couldn’t pretend anymore. You weren’t there, you didn’t see how I fell apart. Not that I’m not blaming you or anything. No. No, I - I get the blame.”

_There. You’re about to say it. You’re about to make it real. So do it. She’s listening. The dead are good listeners._

“I get the blame for this.” Selphie said, “All of it. It’s my fault. Everyone keeps telling me it isn’t, they love doing that. They love going on and on about how I couldn’tve known, that I did everything I could, that everything that could’ve been done was done or some bullshit like that. I think it’s because they know I get the blame, but they don’t want to say it. Pussies.”

Her eyes were dry this time, and Selphie understood then that the truth didn’t always hurt like hell.

“They said it was because of magic. I didn’t use any, but they said it might be that all the spells I’ve used, all the Slots, all the Guardian Force most likely caused it. I’m not a Sorceress, so channeling the energies were bound to take something. Some mages get the shakes, some lose the ability to junction and I... get this. Every mage does, but when I got the news, I thought –why not- maybe I’m the exception to the rule. I’m the exception to just about every other rule there is, so why not this one?”

The cavity in her, humming absently.

“And you know what? I didn’t even know I wanted a child. I never thought about it that way. I always thought we should make the best of it while we’re alive, before we die in an op gone wrong or a culling or hell, slip in the shower and crack our heads open. After everything we’ve gone through, after cheating the Time Compression, I never thought we could slow the fuck down for a second and think about if we wanted a son, or a daughter.”

Her palm pressed against the fabric of her sundress, soft, and beneath it was hollow flesh, waiting.

“But when it came to it, Matron, I couldn’t think about anything I wanted more.”


	6. Why I Have My Grandma's Sad Eyes

**(Sound louder than the bombs.)**

* * *

**(THE OTHER SIDE OF THAT NIGHT.)**

Laughing, Selphie stumbled across the kitchen, glass still in hand. It was Squall’s discovery – a small corner shop in Fisherman’s Horizon making intoxicant drinks from Horizon peaches. They weren’t alcoholic at all, more aphrodisiacs if anything, but they tasted sweet and carried that sharp tang of gin, which elated and saddened Selphie at the same time. It also had the benefit of not reacting to any of the Esuna-based pills or Elixir distillates she had been taking.

Of course, for such an unassuming beverage, it packed quite a punch.

After three glasses, Selphie was giddy, horny, ecstatic and wonderfully disoriented. She watched her step nevertheless, shoulder to the wall. She had been showing for a while now, and hyperaware that her stomach had to be accommodated in everything she did. The morning sickness was bad, and so was having to recuse herself from her classes. She couldn’t do diplomacy because everybody and their mother wanted to congratulate her, or talk about her child, which she found unnerving – the Galbadian president could’ve been an angel for all she knew, but his wife wanting to get grabby with her stomach had been the last straw.

But nevertheless, in that moment, as she crossed the threshold and into the bathroom, Squall’s chuckling still in her ears, Selphie felt that this was the victory they were hoping for. This was it. They were won.

She put the glass on the corner of the sink. She felt flushed. She looked, and saw that she was blushing. Her hair was sticking to her forehead by the roots, bound by sweat. There was a wide, silly grin on her face, mesmerized, as if the sight of herself was enough to make her fall in love again.

_I could kiss you right now, you beautiful bitch._

So she did. She leaned forward and kissed her reflection on the lips.

_Who says death is all you’re good for? Who says-_

* * *

Squall had deliberately kept his Horizon peach juice intake to a single glass. He had sampled it when he had bought it, and knew what he’d be in for if he let loose- 

“_Squall!”_

Squall crossed the distance in a flash and a moment later, he was grabbing her by the armpits, slowly lowering her to the ground. Her fingers dug into his jacket’s arm, and as they curled into a fist, they pulled the fabric. Her other hand grabbed the necklace hanging from his neck, and before Squall could even place the spasms of pain shaking her, could even process what was happening, she screamed.

The sound would haunt him in his dreams for the remainder of his life, shake him from dreams darker than he could dare to remember. Her scream would be ringing in his ears every time he won, every time he succeeded, whispering it phantom reverberations in his every fear, every doubt.

Between sobs, grunts in pain and screaming into his chest, Selphie was shaking like a leaf. Squall, unable to do anything, was holding her, trying to understand what was wrong, what was...

He looked down and saw red on white tiles. 

* * *

Selphie shifted suddenly, pushing him away. Squall lost whatever balance he had on one knee and landed on his ass. Before his eyes, Selphie, screaming still, began to scrape up the fresh blood with her hands, trying to hold onto every droplet as more was leaking, slowly but surely, between her legs. Leaking out of her, leaving her... leaving them...

“Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it,” Selphie was chanting, her voice an oscillating shriek as her trembling hands smeared the blood all over the floor, “, stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop stop stop stop stop _stop stop stop stop stop...”_

Selphie’s eyes show up and found his. In those green orbs he often looked at to find home, he saw nothing but despair. A silent plea: _stop this. Help me. Help me, please, help me._

Something snapped in Squall’s mind. His hand shot up, palm outward.

_“Sleep.”_ He said.

* * *

Two hours later, Squall was staring at the wall of the Infirmary’s waiting room. There was a clock on the wall, ticking steadily, every tick echoing slightly. He was a ghastly sight – his white Master marked with handprints in blood; his face colorless, his eyes dead. Staring at the clock, he couldn’t quite remember how he had managed to shut the Garden down, grab Selphie and rush her to the Infirmary. He remembered calling the Faculty dispatch, and then Brea, and the rest of it was a blank.

He stared at his hands. Dried blood made the lines clearer. He remembered a thousand instances when he had seen this sight, mostly right before washing up. Someone’s life coating his hands, a souvenir from what he had taken.

Squall shuddered. Mercifully, the door to the waiting room opened and Dr. Christin walked in, hands in the pockets of her lab coat. She walked across the room and sat in the seat opposite of Squall’s.

Squall didn’t say anything.

Christin knew Squall Leonhart well enough to know every scar on his body, and the story behind each one. She had shared enough official functions with him to have a basic grasp of who he was. She had seen him in many different conditions: wounded and bleeding, prim and proper, steadfast and official, silent and thus silently desperate for the life of a cadet or recruit.

She couldn’t recall a time when she had actually seen him as he was now. He looked... empty.

“Garden Master, I-“

“Squall.” He said, “Please.”

Christin nodded.

“And don’t bullshit me. Please.” Squall said, “Just tell me.”

Christin sighed.

“There’s no other way to say this... she’s lost the child.” She said, “Our best guess is that it was para-magical energy that mutated her womb. Not enough to prevent a pregnancy, but enough to make it... unsustainable. She should’ve been sterile to begin with – mages are. The-“

“I know the statistics.”

“Very well.”

A moment’s silence.

“What else?” Squall asked.

“We... had to perform a hysterectomy.” Christin said, averting her eyes, “It was malignant, the mass, like a tumor, we... didn’t want to risk leaving mutated tissue inside her, so we...”

“You removed her womb entirely.” Squall said, matter-of-factly.

“Yes.”

“What do I need to do?”

Christine froze. How to tell the most powerful man in the world that he was utterly powerless?

“I...” the hesitant silence was as heavy as Death itself. Her heart heavy as lead, Christin spoke: “Sir, there’s nothing you _can_ do.”

Squall’s right eye twitched. Christin caught it. She felt a tingling in her spine as Squall stood up. Christin followed suit.

Squall extended a hand. Confused, Christin glared at him.

“Thank you, doctor.” Squall said.

Christin shook his hand.

“Sir, I-I...“

“I want to see her.”

“She’ll be moved into the recovery room soon.”

“I know where it is. That'll be all."

Squall turned and walked away. He disappeared behind the doors Christin had come in through, and she found that her head had gone completely blank.


	7. Black Poison Blood

**(Oh, you'll fix all my cracked, broken bones.)**

* * *

**(CENTRA. GRAVESITE.)**

“I have other scars. Stab wounds, entry wounds, exit wounds – they all healed up. They all scarred. Nobody lives as long as I did as a SeeD without a few of them lined up. It’s like a badge of honor with some. I’ve felt like one of those Island Closest to Heaven documentarians, you know, the types that’ll go into monster-infested places just to get a lay of the land and observe them, how they behave, hunt, mate, whatever. I’ve seen junior cadets compare scars and one-up each other to impress fucking sophomores. The yarns they spin, you ought to hear ‘em.”

But this was just stalling, she knew. The truth wasn’t in her map of scars and so her history of bloodshed, all of which Edea had known, some of which she had caused. Because there was one scar above all, first among equals, a straight line stitch healed by masterful hands with the best of intentions that had turned into the worst curse.

“But this one...” her hands travelled the familiar dune of the scar tissue, the slightest, almost undetectable vale in her flesh through which her all had bled out, “...it’s different. Because I didn’t earn it. I didn’t fight to get it. I had no power, Matron. I will never forget that feeling – watching the plunger on that anesthetic go down, my eyelids following it, and my last thought was that when I woke up, the world wouldn’t be the same. It wasn’t. I had a new scar and I had lost a war. I lost a war, Matron.”

Tears, fresh from a well she had thought dried up.

“And when I woke up, the world wasn’t the same. My new scar wasn’t the mark of some battle I would only remember when recounting it in class or feeling it getting closer to the rain. I still feel it there, aching. It’s not that nice out today, but it’s not gonna rain. No, it’s not.”

She grabbed handfuls of her dress.

“But I feel it. It aches, Matron. It’s less now, and I am more used to it, but it aches and it throbs and it screams and it cries and I am sick, I am fucking _sick _of feeling it there, cutting me open. Cutting right into me, like they did, and I feel what they did. They reached in with both hands and took out all that I had left in me, that last bit of whatever it was I was trying to fake was bigger, that smile he always said I saved for him. They cut me open, reached into me, and pulled out my soul.”

White-knuckle tight, the hands holding the dress.

“There wasn’t much left after that. And now...” hands caressed her stomach, flat, her abdominal muscles tight as garrote wires, save for one straight line, an ugly mark on an otherwise chiseled physique, “...it’s all empty inside.”

Selphie sobbed. She took out her handkerchief and wiped her nose.

“And I tried, you know? I really, really did. I got back to training. Took off the stupid Odineum stuff, put on the uniform. Everyone came, like beggars in Deling slums, hands open, all looking at me to say something. Cadets that had bad-mouthed me two days prior, for being a power-hungry whore, now pitied me and so they wanted me to act pitiful. Isn’t that funny? They looked up to me and they were angry with it, and then they looked down on me and I was... like in those books we let them fill the entertainment section of the library with. They wanted me to have some sort of drama moment. But I smiled that smile, I said the words, I did what I was supposed to do. It’s fate, I said. Even Ultimecia couldn’t escape hers, ha ha ha. Start to finish, and I managed. I made it through the day okay. No tears.”

She clenched her teeth.

“But then I came home... to him.”

Her breath came out as a venomous hiss.

“You know Matron, I have so many moments in my life I’d rather not make Guardian Force chow. Like when you took me out of commission to make that fuckhead kill you. But that first night, in the Infirmary, I don’t think there’s a GF alive or dead that’ll make me forget. He just... he just sat there. That’s it. He took my hand, sat next to my bed, and just sort of froze. He didn’t move. He didn’t speak. He didn’t say a goddamn word, he couldn’t open his fucking mouth once in his miserable life to just say something, _anything _worth half a _fuck!_ He didn’t ask me how I was, he didn’t ask me how I felt, nothing, just a blank wall of silence. Like Quistis used to say. Only I was married to this particular wall, and every evening, after I was done, I came to him and his silence.”

Memory of countless evenings spent without words, jumping at every sound he made, hope slowly suffocating under the weight of his stillness... that this was it, that something random would set it off. That he’d hit the bottle. That he’d accidentally break a glass and then cut his hand and then break down.

Weeks of no words.

“I couldn’t take it. I stopped sleeping in our bed after a week of no sleep. I moved to the couch. I expected him to follow me, you know, to come after me, like I had come after him when this all began. Back when we were innocent. But he didn’t. He let me go to that fucking couch on my own, never chased me down, never came around. That callous fuck – and every time I laid down on that couch to sleep, he just shuffled off. That’s when the late nights started. He started coming in later and later until one day, Brea fucking carried him in, six in the morning. Asleep in his office, he said, buried in some insane conspiracy scheme, trying to predict future crises. Contingencies.”

She laughed, bitter.

“I was dying inside, and he was too busy drawing up new ways to die. Shit for posterity.”

She sniffed, stifling a sob.

“What was the point? The only thing that mattered was dead already. Why was it so important? What was he fighting? Well... I know now, but... I wish I had seen it then. Matron, I... I think I did something terrible, and... Hyne, do you know that he never blamed me for that either?”


	8. Believer

**(I'll fight for every breath until there's nothing left of us.)**

* * *

**(FOUR MONTHS AFTER THE DEATH OF HOPE.)**

From out of the corner of his eye, and in the reflection on the gunblade’s surface, he saw her stand in the doorway, expertly wrapping the plaster around her fingers. Just like how he had taught her. Just like how he had taught them all. Multi-disciplinary training wasn’t just something to pass their spare time, of which they had much, but it was a way to train themselves further, to be better.

To never be the one knocked unconscious in the opening salvoes only to end up dead on a stage.

“Hey.” She said. She had her black sweatpants on. Gray sneakers with the pink piping. Gray, faded t-shirt with its arms cut off, showing off her perfectly-toned shoulders and arms.

Squall looked up from his weapon and at her.

“I’m bored.” She said, “I wanna spar.”

“The sandbag didn’t cut it today?” Squall asked.

“It doesn’t move. It doesn’t do anything. I need something a bit more live.”

“Alright. Let me change, then.”

* * *

Squall went into the bedroom and undressed. He threw his boots off, his shirt and pants onto the bed, and reached for the drawer that held his black trainers. Black sneakers. Plain white t-shirt. He pulled out his own roll of plaster and sat on the bed while he wrapped his hands up.

Selphie was flexing her fingers, making sure that she had done it right. Squall found it a bit difficult to concentrate on making sure he was on part with her. She had spent the better part of the past four months hitting the sandbag on a daily basis. It had escalated from there.

“That fight club of yours.” Squall said, finishing up his dominant hand, “You’re still pissed that I wouldn’t let you force cadets to go bare-knuckle on each other.”

Selphie shrugged. “It wasn’t hurting anybody.”

“...you can do better than that.”

“Alright, so it was hurting them, but their enemies won’t come at ‘em with kid gloves. It’s like your survival training. Painful, but better in the long run. Like all things.”

“Whatever, Selphie.”

Selphie shot him a venomous look. He had gotten used to that look over the past months, just like he had gotten used to her two lines of defense: evasion and justification. He had gotten used to walking circles around her. He had gotten used to waking up in the middle of the night and finding her curled up on the couch.

He hadn’t joined her there. This couldn’t work the other way around and he knew it.

Besides, he always had the bed to himself and he couldn’t join her somewhere that he never wanted to be in the first place... except maybe now.

“Come on, quit stalling, you’re good to go.” Selphie said, without looking at him.

Squall flexed his fingers. It felt good. Warm to the touch. 

* * *

The far side of the Master’s level was converted into a full gym. The workout equipment and benches had been clustered to one side, and on the other was a ring-sized mat, softer than the ground but not quite soft proper, for them to practice martial arts. Selphie stepped up to it, doing basic warm-up movements, shaking loose her muscles, and Squall followed suit. She had her back turned to him as they warmed up.

“So what do you have in mind?” Squall asked, rotating his shoulder. There had been a bullet there once, and the after-wound stung just a little when he rotated his arm, a thin pain that had become a part of his damaged body, “Drills?”

“No.” Selphie cricked her knuckles, “It’s a full-on fight. It’s payback for breaking up my club the other day.”

“That last cadet had a pretty bad concussion, Selphie. His opponent almost cracked his skull open.”

“He had his guard down.”

“Alright, fine.” Squall snapped, his voice making Selphie peer over her shoulder to see him cross his arms, “I’m not moving until you tell me what this is about.”

“I can make you move.” Selphie said, turning, putting her guard up, wrists relaxed, her eyes focused.

“You can try.” Squall said, “Just tell me, instead.”

“Oh, no.” Selphie said, “You don’t get to have that. After years of making me guess what’s going on in that pretty little head of yours, you don’t get a piece of my mind with a hissy fit, husband mine.”

“Whatever.”

Squall caught a twitch in her eye, and Selphie struck out, her foot shooting forward and aiming squarely for his face. Without uncrossing his arms, he rotated to his right and avoided. Selphie threw a spinning kick, and Squall stepped back to avoid it. She came at him with a whirlwind of kicks, avoiding punches to stay at a distance, making use of her slightly longer legs and executing gracious combos, while Squall, now with his guard up, avoided and evaded, not letting a single blow get close. He focused on her as a single dot, her brilliant eyes now filled to the brim with anger that had been building up slowly, the anger that had been there every time he had tried to join her in the shower or every time he had made breakfast for her.

Every time he had kissed her on the lips.

“Oh come on!” Selphie shouted, shifting her stance, “Is this any way to spar?”

“You’re not sparring.”

“Oh, fuck you!”

Selphie threw a punch, a solid straight, and Squall caught it open-handed, feeling the impact go straight to his elbow and from there, to the thin pain of the ghost bullet. He pushed her hand away.

“No.” he said, “This isn’t about your fight club. This isn’t about that at all.”

“Don’t tell me what I’m about - just fight me, damn it!”

Selphie threw a kick. Squall blocked. She continued to come at him and he continued to block and parry, using his larger size and superior strength to his advantage. Selphie was on fire, a ball of energy punching and kicking and spinning and leaping all around him, a blur of strikes that he knew he would have to stop, but the only way to do that was to strike back.

Selphie executed a feint, masterfully shifting the other way and spinning around to deliver a punch to the back of his head with the bottom of her fist. Squall heard the impact and for a moment, as black spots flashed before his eyes, he felt that he wasn’t sure that he could strike back.

He turned, his guard up, and Selphie went under it, using her smaller stature to slip past and Squall caught a kick to the gut. Although he held fast, the wind was nearly knocked out of him.

“Fight back!” Selphie shouted, feinting left and striking right, under his guard once again, “Fucking... fight back!”

“No!” Squall hissed through clenched teeth, trying to match her speed, but she had turned his obsession with technique and his side into liabilities, easily breaching his defenses. He caught a punch to the nose and felt the cartilage break, and blood came rushing out of it, blinding him and painting his shirt red. A kick opened the thin skin over his eyebrow. He blocked the best he could, all the while hearing her scream:

“Fucking fight back, you fucking pussy! You fucking coward! C’mon, hit me!”

“I’m not going to!” Squall protested, “This isn’t what I want, this isn’t-“

“Fuck what you want! You coward, you don’t even speak to me! You don’t even have...” a kick to his ankle, the beginning of a rigorous dance based in footwork, “...the common decency to fucking tell me straight to my face!”

“Tell you what, Selphie, fucking what!?”

“You don’t even fucking have the guts to stand up and tell me what we already know!”

She spun, her leg coming in at a high angle, and Squall caught her by the ankle. She punched him in the gut once, twice, thrice, four times before he let her go and leapt back to put some distance in between.

Selphie was raring to go, taking a stance to rush forward, but Squall put his hand up, and she caught his eyes. Those ice blue eyes, the will behind them stretched to their limit.

Almost to the breaking point. The precipice. The longest mile.

“What...” Squall panted, wiping blood from his face with the back of his hand, “...do we know?”

That did it for her. Something snapped in her head, as if it had been waiting for him to ask that same question.

“Oh, fuck’s sake, Squall, get the fuck real! It’s that time, ya know? Come down to earth and look at this!”

Her hands lifted up her t-shirt to reveal a straight, pinkish line under her belly button. A straight line stitch. One he had desperately wanted to kiss, in hopes of sucking out the poison contained therein. One he had never touched.

“Do you see this? _This_ was it! Hyne, I had her!” Selphie’s scream echoed in the open space, scattering all around, “I had her and she was mine and she was going to beat this life and then just like that she was _gone_ and you – well, you just fucking clammed up, shut me out, just blocked it out and carried on, same shit, different day, like nothing ever happened, like you didn’t give a _fuck!_ Like you had something better to do, some small village to destroy, some more bodies to pile up! Paperwork and training – how many swordsmen and women have you raised in the past five months, huh? How many cadets you’d rather sweat and bleed with than to just look at me!? How many future scenarios, how many paranoid fantasies -oh, I’m sorry, you call them contingencies, don’t you, you anal retentive motherfucker- did you brood over than to tell me it’d be alright? Tell me now, you fuck – what gives you the right to shut me off like this!?”

Squall’s eyes changed then, and Selphie felt what it was like to be his enemy in that moment. What she saw in the eyes that always, even in the core moments of her accusations, had looked at her with kindness and that little bit of sadness she had found so heartbreaking, were now looking at her, sizing her up, regarding her as an adversary.

But she hadn’t guessed that he would actually speak.

She hadn't thought him capable until he did.

“How dare you?” he snarled, “Do you think that whatever you feel, I don't feel it? Do you think you’re the one who’s lost something? Do you think,” he marched up to her, making her step back, retreat, shrink in fear,”, that I wouldn’t trade in the lives of all the cadets and SeeDs, and Seifer, and Quistis, _and Sis_, and everyone else in this fucking world, and the Garden, and SeeD, and everything, fucking _everything_ just to have held her in my arms for just a moment? Just for one moment!? But no – your pain is more important, isn’t it? Well, you want a fight? You’ve got one! See how I fight!”

Before Selphie could react, Squall leapt forward and came down hard. His fist missed her head, but the moment he landed, his uppercut found her jaw and loosened two teeth. She felt the pain grip her skull tightly and tried to keep her footing. Squall smashed his elbow into her side and racked a rib. Selphie put her guard up, trying to defend, but he was coming down on her hard and he was much stronger than she was – a bastion of pure, unfiltered anger, screaming and kicking.

"Who do you think you're fucking with!?" he shouted, "Four Sorceresses to my name, what the fuck have you even done!?"

His knee smashed into her torso and knocked the wind out of her. Before she could find a breath, she felt his hands on his wrist and elbow. He slipped around and held her there, forcing her to bend.

They stood still. Selphie was trembling under his touch, and him, he was trembling with anger.

“And do you think...” Selphie couldn’t see him, but could hear his tears, “...Hyne, do you think I am any good? Grand Master? What the hell does that even mean, all of my power, all of my influence... I can bring down Esthar if I want to, wouldn’t take me twenty minutes and all of it, Selphie, fucking all of it – _what the fuck good is any of it if I couldn’t even save my own child!?”_

He started crying then. Selphie wriggled, trying to get away. Her head was a mess of screaming panic and rushing blood.

This wasn’t how she had wanted it to be, but then... hadn’t that been the story all along?

“Just tell me...” he pleaded, trying to speak through the pain and the anguish, “...tell me what you want and I’ll do it. For you, huh? Just for you. Only for you. I’ll change the world, kill whoever, I’ll jump off the FH bridge, I’ll kill every last cadet, anything, anything you want... just tell me. Please.”

Selphie felt the line. Her head felt like it was on fire. There was too much pressure inside, and now, he had his hands on the valve. She felt it on the tip of her tongue, what she had wanted from the moment she had woken up to Christin telling her about the hysterectomy, about losing her child, about the clinical details of something so precious that she didn’t have proper words to describe it. The shape of things to come, dead in a surgical-grade steel tray somewhere, and now... she could make it all make sense.

She could finally get what she wanted.

“Break it.” She said, “Go on. Break my arm.”

She looked at him then and saw tears streaming down his cheeks, drawing clear lines on the drying blood covering half of it. One eye closed, one eye barely open, she saw emotions dance in his head, one after the other, like a long line of dominoes finally falling, forming the shape of his perfect breakdown.

The sound of the bone snapping was drowned out by his final, desperate scream.


	9. The Collapse

**(The sky was cracked like porcelain.)**

* * *

**(CENTRA. WHERE SHE IS BURIED.)**

“...and that was it, Matron. That was us.”

A moment’s silence. One hand caressed her arm and she shivered to her own touch.

“It’s all healed now. Good as new. But sometimes, I imagine it aching to remind me what he gave to me. I needed that. I needed the pain, needed him to hurt me, needed him to make me _feel_. I needed the damage. I wanted him to tell me I was right, that I was to blame. That he blamed me.”

Selphie smiled a mischievous smile.

“You wanna know a dirty little secret, Matron?” she imagined a curious nod, “He can’t take it back.”

She giggled, ecstatic.

“He can’t take it back because now, I will always know. I will always remember the moment when he finally surrendered.” Selphie chuckled, “Soldiers and generals and corrupt Garden Masters and armies and Sorceresses have tried... but it was me who brought Squall Leonhart to his knees. Lil’ ole me. That’s the worst of all - knowing that I made him give in.” Selphie hesitated, but why deny it now, “Knowing I made him give _up_. Not just his fight, but everything. He lost everything when he broke my arm, Matron, when he brought himself to hurt me like that, even if I had asked him to. I lost our child, I lost myself... and then I lost him. I traded him like an unwanted trinket spent in the Fisherman’s Horizon bazaar - his heart for a little less pain. And looking back at it now, I can’t help but be a little selfish and I wanna say I don’t regret it.”

Selphie sighed.

“Except I can’t. Every time I look into those baby blues and see nothing behind them, I see that I betrayed him. Forced him to retreat, go back to who he was. Not a hope in the world, nothing meaningful, just sitting there, figuring out new ways to die. He has the whole world in his hands, Matron. One phone call and he can do anything. All that power and I showed him how useless it all was. How powerless he truly was... we truly are.”

Tears, she felt, but there were none left by that point.

“And that’s just it, Matron. My fever broke when he broke my arm. One move to change it all. I don’t know where we are now. Brea’s doing a fine job of being the General. I’ve seen the cadets, they’re scared of her, but they also drool all over her whenever she walks into a room. Not just that she fought and bled with us, that’d be too easy. She commands respect. Sometimes, I have this image in my head. Back during the war, of her, just standing there, hands together in front of her, all prim and proper, just listening to me shouting whatever I thought would degrade her the most. Just taking it like some chump. But all I remember now are her eyes. Like Squall’s, keeping everything locked up. Because deep down, she felt that she deserved it. I know what that feels like, I knew it when I was cussing her out, and I know it now. But Matron, somebody has to get to blame. Somebody has to be at fault, or it’s ours, and sorry, but fuck that.”

A moment’s silence. In her heart of hearts, Selphie knew that the truth she had to speak wasn’t what had happened to her, nor did it concern Brea’s feelings. She knew the truth like she knew the furious lump in her throat, moving up to her tongue as she stared at the letters etched in stone.

“I blame you.” She said.

The knot began to unravel, but there were more strands than her proclamation could undo.

“You couldn’t cut it. Squall was wrong about you – him and sorceresses, he’s blind where that’s concerned. You couldn’t take it.” Her hands curled into fists, “You fucked it up! We should’ve handed you to them on a silver platter when we had the chance, ‘cause now look at us! Look at your children! One’s grave was desecrated, another is lost forever now, I had my child ripped away from me, and over what? Over fucking what!? Magic? Power? Fucking – I don’t know, immortality, maybe? How’s that workin’ out for ya? Huh? Answer me, you bitch, tell me the truth - _what was it all for!?_”

When the levee broke, Selphie came crashing down. Her fists pounding the earth covering the grave, tears flowing freely, screaming and sobbing, she cried, free and out in the open, pouring out every ounce of poison that she had collected inside herself. She asked the question again and again and again, because what was it all for? What was it all for?

Beneath it, she knew that there was a second question, the answer of which she was afraid of more than she had feared anything in her life: had it all been for nothing?

* * *

The storm passed, leaving behind the wreck of a woman in its wake. Now weary, aching inside and out, she wiped her tears with the hem of her sundress and tried to find something inside of her that’d let her speak.

“A-and th-that’s it, really... there’s nothing else. I have nothing else left. For a moment there, I thought the war was over. Finally over. I’ve fought battles all my life. I’m sick of it. I’m tired. I wanna sleep and forget about it all. I want...”

Heavy sigh, deep breath.

“I want to have died in one of them. I want some punk to have gotten lucky, or a stray bullet to have missed someone else and found me. A bomb, whatever. I want whatever it is to have caught me. When I look back, Matron, all I want is to be a casualty. I’ve lived too long, I’ve survived too long. Why all of them and not me? Because I’m stronger? Because I’m better? Because I’m such hot shit? No. I’m not. I’m just a SeeD. I’m nothing.”

Truth. Selphie stood up. She brushed the dust off of her dress. She straightened herself out, much as she could, and ignored the cavity in her body.

“Thanks for listening, Matron.” She said, “Hyne knows, I needed someone to.”

She caressed the headstone, its rough surface seeming soft and warm to her touch.

“We’re all just fucked up little kids, Matron. Don’t worry, I think we’ll join you before long. But until then, goodbye.”

The walk back to the hovercraft was long and quiet.


End file.
